Nina Hartley

Hartley was born in Berkeley, California, in March 1959,^[6] the youngest of four children^[7] of a Lutheran father, Louis Hartman, and a Jewish mother, Blanche Hartman (née Gelders).^[8] Her grandfather, Joseph Gelders, was a University of Alabama physics professor, a prominent labor and civil rights activist, and a Communist Party USA (CPUSA) member in the 1930s.^[9][8]

Hartley's parents converted to Buddhism when she was young.^[10] Her mother supported the family as a biochemist^[9] after her father, San Francisco radio announcer Louis Hartman, was blacklisted in 1957 for his communist beliefs.^[11]

As a teenager, Hartley self-identified as a feminist, influenced by the slogan "my body, my rules".^[6][12][13] After graduating from Berkeley High School in 1977, she attended San Francisco State University's undergraduate nursing school and graduated magna cum laude in 1985,^[9][14][15] receiving a Bachelor of Science in Nursing.^[16] She was a registered nurse^[17][10] until her license expired in 1986.^[18]

Hartley has stated that pornography is one of the few places where women are allowed to initiate and take pleasure in sex in a society that restricts women's sexuality with expectations of virginity, monogamy, and childbearing.^[19] She deliberately sought a career in pornography as a way to make a living by having sex,^[20] later telling Las Vegas Weekly, "Porn gave me easy access to women without having to date them or have a relationship."^[13] She writes that part of her reason for choosing sex work was to be able to indulge her exhibitionistic and voyeuristic streak.^[7] She has said she chose her life's work when she saw the 1976 erotic film The Autobiography of a Flea alone at a theater in San Francisco.^[21][8]

In 1982, during her sophomore year of nursing school, Hartley started working as a stripper at the Sutter Cinema and then the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre.^[22][23] She told an interviewer that she chose the name "Nina" because it was easy for Japanese tourists to say during the time she was a dancer in San Francisco, and "Hartley" because it was close to her own last name, and she "wanted a name that sounded like that of a real person."^[23]

Her pornographic film debut was in Educating Nina (1984),^[24] where she was cast and directed by fellow performer Juliet Anderson.^[22][25][26] For many years, she toured the United States and Canada as a stripper and made personal appearances at sex shops.^[27][28] Hartley describes her father's reaction to her choice of occupation:

He asked, 'Why sex? Why not the violin?' I know now that I'm sexual the way that Mozart was musical [...] a life of public sexuality has, from my very first time on stage, been as natural to me as breathing."^[12]

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Hartley starred in several of the Debbie Does Dallas film series spin-offs such as Debbie Duz Dishes (1986) and Debbie Does Wall Street (1991).^[27] In 1992, she directed her first movie, Nina Hartley's Book of Love.^[29] She also produced and starred in a series of sex education videos for Adam & Eve.^[30][31] In 1994, she began her line of instructional videos marketed under the Nina Hartley's Guide brand.^[28]

She played the part of Hillary Clinton in the 2008 satirical pornographic film Who's Nailin' Paylin?,^[32] with Lisa Ann in the role of Sarah Palin.^[33] As of 2015^[update], she was still actively performing,^[22] and by 2017 had appeared in more than one thousand pornographic films.^[3] She has been described by the San Francisco Chronicle as "one of the best-known actresses in the industry"^[25] and by CNBC as "a legend in the adult world".^[5]

Hartley acted in the 1996 Canadian film Bubbles Galore^[34] and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show^[16][5] and The Phil Donahue Show to defend the pornographic film industry.^[16] In the 1997 film Boogie Nights, she played William H. Macy's character's serially unfaithful wife who is murdered.^[14][28] She later remarked, "The only movie I ever died in for having sex was a mainstream movie."^[14]

Hartley appeared in the 1998 documentary Traci Lords: The E! True Hollywood Story^[16] and was interviewed in The Naked Feminist (2003).^[35][36] Hartley was featured in After Porn Ends (2012), and appears in Sticky: A (Self) Love Story (2016),^[37] in which she discusses masturbation with regards to education, the forced resignation of Joycelyn Elders, and her opinions on the blackballing of comedian Paul Reubens after his arrest for masturbating in a public theater.^{[citation needed]}

Las Vegas Weekly has described Hartley as an "outspoken feminist, sex educator and advocate for sexual freedom" and "a guiding force for a generation of feminist porn stars".^[4] She has described herself both as a "classical liberal feminist"^[38][39] and a democratic socialist.^[32] Hartley began engaging in feminist activism in the 1980s.^[40] She has said:

Based on my experience as a woman and a sexual being, and my understanding that I had the right to decide for myself what to do with my life – that's what I understood to be feminist, to give everybody choices – I didn't choose to be a mother but I chose this [porn] because it suits me.^[41]

Hartley has also been involved in socialist activism^[42] and has also been affiliated with the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (APAC), a labor union founded in 2014 for pornographic film actors.^[32]

Hartley was elected to the board of the Free Speech Coalition in 1995,^[43] and is a long-time board member of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation (founded in 2003).^[44] She has made frequent appearances at academic conferences, workshops, and in the media to promote sex positivity.^[45] She has given lectures at Dartmouth College, Harvard University, and the University of California.^[46][44]

In 2006, Hartley co-authored Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex with her husband, Ira Levine. The book includes sections on sex toys, swinging, threesomes, dominance and submission, and erotic spanking.^[14] Library Journal called the book a "well-written guide" that is "strong on both safe sex and a permissive approach", saying Hartley "handles the material frankly, accurately, and with sensitivity".^[14]

Hartley is a self-described bisexual, swinger, and exhibitionist.^[13][9][47] She married her first husband, a former Students for a Democratic Society leader,^[9] in a three-way marriage with a second woman in 1986.^[22] She describes the relationship as a "very unhappy marriage" to "someone who was not a good candidate for mating with a sex worker".^[48]

Following her divorce in 2003,^[22] Hartley married Ira Levine, known professionally as Ernest Greene,^[48] a director of bondage films and editor of Hustler's Taboo magazine,^[9][49] with whom she had had a secret relationship in the 1980s.^[49] They are openly polyamorous.^[48][49] As of 2014^[update], the couple lives in Los Angeles.^[49]

• Hartley, Nina (1993). "Reflections of a Feminist Porn Star". Porn in the USA. Gauntlet: Exploring the Limits of Free Expression. Vol. 5. Springfield, Penn.: Gauntlet Inc. pp. 62–68. ISBN 978-0-9629-6594-4.
• ——————— (1994). "Confessions of a Feminist Porno Star". In Jaggar, Alison M. (ed.). Living With Contradictions: Controversies In Feminist Social Ethics. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. pp. 176–178. ISBN 978-0-8133-1775-5 – via the Internet Archive.
• ——————— (1997). "In the Flesh: A Porn Star's Journey". In Nagle, Jill (ed.). Whores and Other Feminists. New York: Routledge. pp. 57–65. ISBN 978-0-4159-1822-0 – via the Internet Archive.
• With Levine, I. S. (2006). Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex. New York: Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-58333-263-4.
• With Morpheous (2012). How to Be Kinkier: More Adventures in Adult Playtime. San Francisco, Calif.: Green Candy Press. ISBN 978-1-9311-6094-0.
• Hartley, Nina (2013). "Porn: An Effective Vehicle for Sexual Role Modeling and Education". In Taormino, Tristan; et al. (eds.). The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure. New York: The Feminist Press. pp. 228–236. ISBN 978-1-5586-1818-3 – via the Internet Archive.
• ——————— (2015). "Culture Clash". In Lee, Jiz (ed.). Coming Out Like a Porn Star: Essays on Pornography, Protection, and Privacy. Berkeley, Calif.: ThreeL Media. pp. 255–256. ISBN 978-0-9905571-6-6 – via the Internet Archive.

• Candida Royalle – American pornographic filmmaker (1950–2015)
• Feminist views on pornography